Sue Huang

Work in progress
AI-generated text, deepfake video, mixed media installation
Variable dimensions

Erotic Ecologies (work in progress) explores a damaged ecology through the lens of the erotic. In this work, the erotic acts as a reanimating force, an antidote to oblivion that breathes life into a dying landscape. This force is, as Audre Lorde writes, “a source of power” that “give[s] us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world.” Countering a dominant cultural narrative of anthropocentrism, the work centers ecological intimacy as a means of exploring the ways that all entities—human and nonhuman, living and nonliving—are messily enmeshed. By reenvisioning the landscape as an erotic body, the project posits that we can create new languages of caring and begin to imagine different futures.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), over 600 field books from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and Internet-found erotica (text and video), the project generates synthetic media. Field books, created during scientists’ fieldwork, contain textual information ranging from specimen names to weather observations, as well as photographs, drawings, and maps. The work is particularly focused on material from the field books that captures subjective memories of ecological intimacies.

Working within a queer and feminist ecological framework, the project explores the feedback loops that exist between humans and nonhumans—both biological and technological. The text-generating AI, trained on the erotic/ecological amalgam, generates an endless supply of texts, performing a chimeric poetics that juxtaposes the scientific and the sensual. In addition, the project employs deepfake technology—typically used to animate one human with the motions of another—to animate field book images with the uncannily familiar visual grammar of the erotic.

Supported by the Scholarship Facilitation Fund (UConn Office of the Vice President for Research).

Prototype Music Composer
Fisher Phillips

Work-in-progress
Two-channel video, sound, terracotta
Variable dimensions

Total Archive is a sci-fi installation/performance work that weaves together science history and speculative futures to explore ecological intimacies in a time of environmental devastation. Through a series of performance readings, the work relates a series of government documents and “strange” objects found in a time capsule from the future. Prepared by an intern working at a natural history museum, these artifacts hint at an ecological system in its final throes. Moving between analogue and digital processes, mixing artificial intelligence together with handmade artifacts, the work explores our striving to preserve a memory of the nonhuman in a time of loss.

Supported by the Culture Council at the Emerson Collective, Leonardo@Djerassi (Leonardo/ISAST and Djerassi Resident Artists Program), and the University of Connecticut (UConn) SFA Research Grant (the School of Fine Arts and the Office of the Vice President for Research) and the SCHARP Development Award (the Humanities Institute and the Office of the Vice President for Research).

2024
Automated phone system, AI-generated text, audio, vinyl stickers
5.25 x 2.25 in.

Desert Center, USA is an interactive sound work that uses the language of the erotic to explore human/nonhuman ecological entanglements. Audience members are invited to dial a phone number (distributed via vinyl sticker) and listen to readings generated by an artificial intelligence. The AI—trained on an amalgamation of over 600 science field books from the Smithsonian Institution Archives and over 10,000 Internet-found erotica stories—draws upon a collective consciousness to conjure as-yet-unspoken languages of desire. Countering a dominant cultural narrative of anthropocentrism, the work explores the ways that all entities—human and nonhuman, living and nonliving—are bound together in a web of ecological intimacies. In this work, the erotic is, as Audre Lorde writes, “a source of power” that “give[s] us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world.”

WIP Exhibition
Unfolding, Philadelphia Contemporary at Atelier Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Dear Being, LAST Projects, Los Angeles, CA

2022
In collaboration with Brian House
Double bass, municipal and public data, network
Variable dimensions

Post-Natural Pastorale is a sound/video installation that explores the relationship between human and environmental temporalities in a time of climate crisis. The project takes as its starting point New York City’s Freshkills, once known as Fresh Kills Landfill, the largest municipal dump in the world. Currently in the process of a decades-long transformation into a public park, Freshkills is a uniquely liminal space, where our long-term effects on the Earth are palpable.

The installation emerges from the multitemporal dynamics of this environment—the thousand-year decay of a Styrofoam cup, the multigenerational use of the land by humans, the seasonal cycle of the regenerating vegetation, and the gathering of clouds. Each of these temporal layers is translated into musical notation using municipal and public data, including statistical projections of weather patterns and methane and leachate emissions data from the Department of Sanitation.

The resulting eight scores are played by double bassist Robert Black (Bang on a Can All-Stars), whose performances are filmed compressed into a single-channel video and sound work. The work creates a soundscape of data that coalesces multiple temporalities into one immersive experience.

Supported by The Robert Black Foundation and the Scholarship Facilitation Fund (UConn Office of the Vice President for Research). Selected by Creative Capital On Our Radar 2020.

Exhibition
Bang-on-a-Can First Fridays
Grounding, New Media Artspace, Baruch College, New York, NY

Commission
Freshkills Park Alliance, Staten Island, NY

Performer
Robert Black

Producer
Mariel Villeré

Co-Producer
David Feinberg

Animation
Alexander Dupuis

Director of Photography
Paul Shin

In collaboration with Jonah King
VR film, scrim, 3D printed plastic
Variable dimensions

Honey Fungus: Undersoil is a sci-fi VR work that invites the audience to expand their bodily experience of the greater ecosystem. In this work, a queer sentient ecological being—manifested in the form of an omnipresent mycelial entity—leads the audience on a journey that culminates in moments of erotic intensity. The hybridized environments and intertwined storylines allow the audience to collectively experience an entangled ecology.

The project opens new perspectives for understanding where one body ends and another begins–where one being ends and the other begins. In this VR world, we embrace the possibility that we all have not only our one body but also, as scholar Daisy Hildyard suggests, a 'second body' through which we are all interconnected. Perhaps, from within these collective experiences, we can begin to imagine and craft new worlds of care—and in doing so, materialize a new path forward through the climate crisis.

Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and the University of Connecticut. Supported by NEW INC, Science Sandbox, LMCC Arts Center Residency, and GBA.

Exhibition
GBA, Brooklyn, NY
Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Urban Soils Institute, LMCC Arts Center, Governor’s Island, New York
RealMix 2022, Hyphen Hub, Colombia
Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
NEW INC, NewLab, Brooklyn, NY
VISUAL Carlow, Ireland

Executive Producer
Winslow Porter

VR Production
Pariah Interactive

Audio
Reading: Helga Hansen Logan
Sound Design: Frank Sweeney
Vocals: Anna Roberts-Gevalt
Mixing Engineer: Daniel Neumann

2019
Part III (Cloud Ice Cream) in collaboration with Dr. Dennis D’Amico
Multi-channel live video, computers, monitors, paper, projection, CCTV cameras, terracotta, ice cream, custom software
Variable dimensions

In the Time of Clouds is an installation that utilizes the networked “cloud” to explore our collective sensorial relationship to the sky. Responding to a February 2019 Nature Geoscience article that speculates about a possible future without clouds, the project attempts to archive cloud forms and document their influence on our collective imagination before they disappear from our atmosphere due to rising carbon dioxide concentrations. Utilizing both social media discourse about clouds and live video streams from public observatory cameras, the project amalgamates linguistic and visual data, mining this data to create an atmospheric triptych of poetry, ice cream, and ceramics.

The installation is composed of three intertwined parts. Part I (The Observatories) is a series of videos showing a composite of poems and live streams from networked observatory webcams. The videos provide a simultaneous view of the sky from different points around the earth. Overlaid texts tick horizontally, displaying haiku poems algorithmically generated from social media discourse about the taste of clouds. The computer program creates an essentially infinite number of poem permutations. In addition to generating poems, the program also detects and captures cloud forms from the live streams, creating an archive of line drawings that are cataloged and printed according to location, date, and time.

These printed line drawings lay the foundation for Part II (Terracotta Clouds), a collection of handbuilt dessert wares that are based on unique cloud forms from the archive. These terracotta wares are utilized in the exhibition as objects for consuming sweets (ice cream). However, they also serve as cautionary objects, attempting to document the clouds using earthenware—connecting an artistic medium from prehistoric times to a speculative future. The wares are intended to be eventually buried in the ground, becoming archaeological artifacts for future civilizations—human or alien—once our time on this earth has passed.

In Part III (Cloud Ice Cream), the terracotta wares are used to serve an ice cream whose flavor profile is derived from social media discourse speculating about the taste of clouds, a “cloud ice cream.” Using over 10 years of scraped language data drawn from the same data set used to create the poems, the piece explores our collective imagination about the taste of these ephemeral formations, parsing this data and materializing it in the cloud-like form of ice cream—a food that is made more sensorially “fluffy” through high levels of air injection. The ice cream was developed in collaboration with Dr. Dennis D’Amico, associate professor of dairy foods at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Animal Science, and created at the UConn Dairy Creamery.

Supported by the University of Connecticut (UConn) SFA Research Grant (the School of Fine Arts and the Office of the Vice President for Research) and the SCHARP Development Award (the Humanities Institute and the Office of the Vice President for Research).

Exhibition
Dear Being, LAST Projects, Los Angeles, CA
Glitch is the Soul in the Machine, Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), Minneapolis, MN
Glitch is the Soul in the Machine, iDMAa, Winona State University, Winona, MN
Biophilic Cities, NEW INC, Pioneer Works Second Sundays, Brooklyn, NY
Constructing Contexts, Art Machines 2, Singing Waves Gallery, Hong Kong
ISEA2020: Why Sentience?, Montreal, Canada (virtual exhibition, catalog)
Practice Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Catalog
ISEA2020: Why Sentience? Programme Book, Montreal, Canada

Production
UConn Dairy Creamery

Fabrication
Urban Sawn

2016
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Computers, monitors, brass ensemble
Variable dimensions

Oh Dear Me was created as a commissioned work for NEoN (North East of North) in Scotland. In this performance, the public is invited to chat through a distributed hybrid digital/analog musical messaging system that activates the acoustic geography and industrial history of Dundee, Scotland.

A series of musicians are situated along a path winding through the historic jute mills of the Blackness area of Dundee. Visitors are invited to type a message into a computer console at either endpoint of the path, and their words are digitally encoded via fragments of The Jute Mill Song (Oh Dear Me), a folk song written around 1920 by Dundee mill worker and labor activist Mary Brooksbank. The musicians subsequently pass the music to one another by ear until the message is decoded on the opposite terminal. Along the way, the melodies cascading through the city reverberate in urban spaces associated with Dundee's industrial past and connect historical textile production with the contemporary labor of our culture of computation.

Supported by Creative Scotland

Exhibition/Commission
North East of North (NEoN) at West Ward Works and Verdant Works, Dundee, Scotland

Musicians
Red Note Ensemble

Documentation
Bonnie Brae Productions

2016
Tissue lamé, drapery cord, cord cleats, wood and paper bird cage, acrylic paint on rattan basket, and metal necklace, pin, bells, dollhouse miniatures, vase, candlestick holders, bowls, curtain rings, single-channel video, sound, video, rear projection acrylic, projector, computer, Raspberry Pi, network camera
132 x 300 x 348 in.

Golden Structure explores the collective reconstruction of memory. The work consists of a modular system of suspended gold textiles and golden objects collected from local estate sales, held together with a grid framework of drapery cord. Visitors are invited to build, extend, dismantle, and rebuild—the space continuously evolving throughout the duration of the exhibition as an amalgamation of the various forts, shelters, and homes of our collective personal histories.

The multi-sensorial space weaves together live video streams of forest views from my home, field recordings from my yard, and an eclectic collection of golden objects and bells; visitors are invited to contribute additional golden objects.

Supported in part by the Art Angels, Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts; Northampton Arts Council (funding by the Massachusetts Cultural Council); and the Artist’s Resource Trust Fund, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.

Exhibition
A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA

2015
Laser-cut acrylic mirror
Variable dimensions

Invisible Piece is a site-specific installation work consisting of mirrors embedded into the crevices and holes of trees. The work creates an interplay of reflective surfaces through which visitors experience displacements of the surrounding environment. The mirrors blend into the visual field while simultaneously creating peripheral interruptions of sight. While moving through and exploring the space, visitors discover new intimacies and sensorial relationships with their environment.

The mirrors are precisely fitted into the trees through a process using digital images and digital tracing with physical output to laser-cut acrylic forms.

Exhibition
Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton, MA
The Mount, Lenox, MA

2014
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Orchestra, Raspberry Pi computers, network
Variable dimensions

Arrangement for Building was created as a commissioned work for the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. The work was performed in conjunction with the exhibition Buildering at the Contemporary Art Center’s location in downtown Cincinnati.  The piece consists of a deconstructed rendition of Modest Mussorgsky's composition "Pictures at an Exhibition" performed within the museum by a small chamber orchestra from the College-Conservatory of Music and conducted by a computer program.

The title of the piece refers not only to the musical arrangement of the work, but also to the physical arrangement of the musicians within the space of the building. Rather than playing as a single unit, the musicians are distributed throughout the seven floors of the building. They play not only on the distinctive zig-zag staircases and in the gallery spaces that open from floor to floor, but also in the administrative offices, the maintenance rooms, and forgotten corners of this unique structure designed by Zaha Hadid. The entirety of the musical score is played in synchronicity despite the vast distances between the musicians. A network of computers (one stationed at each musician), act as a spatially distributed metronome, keeping the musicians in time and creating a physical orchestral database that can be accessed by the audience in a non-linear way. The audience, while prevented from hearing the orchestra as a whole, is invited to roam, encountering intersections of sound and drawing—through their movement—an invisible web linking the musicians together. The audience experiences both the architecture and the musical piece in new ways through the physicality of walking through the building.

Exhibition/Commission
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH
Feminist Climate Change, UCLA Art Sci, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria

Curator
Steven Matijcio

Video Documentation
Nupur Mathur
Tony Walsh

Photo Documentation
Nupur Mathur

Musicians
Daniel Arute
Adam Butalewicz
Dasom Cheon
Matt Cullen
Peter Gorak
Nave Graham
Keith Kile
Katelyn Kyser
Brooke Ten Napal
Amy Pirtle
John Renfroe

Musician Coordinator
Erin Helgeson Torres

2010
Inkjet print on paper
8 x 10 in. each

Sketchbook – Paper on Paper #1-10 is a series of photographic pieces showing small collages and drawings on a background of graph paper in a sketchbook.  The work explores a daily practice of small gestures in art-making.  In its presentation as a printed work of pigment on paper, it also explores the multi-step process of translating these small gestures into a medium of greater formality.  The prints are presented recessed into their frames and are sized such that they reproduce the sketchbook in its original dimensions, creating a trompe-l’oeil effect which evokes the importance of the humbler origins of the printed works.

2010
Multi-channel video, black-and-white, projectors
144 x 96 in.

Sunroof View is a two-channel video projection installation showing a vertical projection into the corner of a room. The projection is reflected on the vertical axis such that the image is mirrored across the corner seam. The video shows footage shot out of the sunroof of a moving car, capturing the utility wires that permeate the skyline of Los Angeles and passing clouds. The footage was then edited to erase all references to any objects that were not wires. The work explores the abstraction of an urban landscape, evoking the sliding lines of the ubiquitous industrial wire and the mirages of a Los Angeles heat wave. The architectural structure of the corner captures the disappearing wire, acting as a liminal space into which images disappear.

Exhibition
Digifesta, Gwangju Biennale Hall, Gwangju, Korea

2009
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Projectors, rear projection screens, computers, Arduinos, Linksys routers, electronic components, plastic and rubber car base, wood track
Variable dimensions

MOCA Grand Prix was created as one of three commissioned works for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles as part of the museum's program Engagement Party. In this work, visitors to the museum are invited to race remote-controlled cars through the museum’s permanent collection exhibition. Using miniature mounted cameras, participants drive each Wi-Fi-enabled car remotely through a video game interface that shows the car’s point of view. Museum visitors are not physically permitted in the exhibition space. They can only view the exhibition in its entirety via video projections.

Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Mark Rothko works loom large in the landscape of the video, as do the feet and hands of the giant-sized track assistants and car handlers.  The work explores issues of perception and seeing in the act of museum-going and turns the exhibition space of a traditional museum show inside-out, subverting our commonly understood social practices.  The at-times-racing and at-times-meandering paths of the cars driving through the museum echo the paths of the everyday museum-goers as they loop round and round the space.

Supported by the James Irvine Foundation

Exhibition
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA (catalog)

Catalog
Engagement Party Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012

Curator/Producer
Aandrea Stang
Think Tank

Production Assistance
Meghan Grebling
Matt Miller
Ronald Vega
Alanna Yu
Jay Yan

Video Documentation
Alex MacInnis

Photo Documentation
Patrick Miller

2009
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Soccer players, AstroTurf, multi-channel video, paint on foam balls, embroidery on textile, gaffer tape
Variable dimensions

Trying the Hand of God was created as one of three commissioned works for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles as part of the museum's program Engagement Party. The work explores the media-perpetuated nature of the chance moment, hosting a carefully choreographed continuous reenactment of the infamous illegal—but not penalized—"Hand of God" soccer goal from the 1986 FIFA World Cup. The performance is staged on a recreation of Mexico City's Azteca Stadium, constructed within the confines of the MOCA Sculpture Plaza. Audience members are invited to play the role of Diego Maradona, the Argentine soccer legend who scored the controversial goal against England during the quarterfinals, eventually leading his team to win the match and the tournament.

Through live performance, the work introduces the potential for variations on a familiar, media-repeated image. The issue of variation is particularly interesting in this case, as the controversy over the "Hand of God" goal raised complex questions of chance, skill, and fate. In their choreographed reenactments, Knifeandfork attempts to control for all possible variables, yet the possibility of a "perfect" performance inevitably remains elusive. Rather, the repetitions serve as a form of kinetic documentation, both of what was and what might have been, and they grant the audience agency over the representation of an iconic event which has been otherwise ossified by media reproduction.

Supported by the James Irvine Foundation

Exhibition
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA (catalog)

Catalog
Engagement Party Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012

Curator/Producer
Aandrea Stang
Think Tank

Performance/Video Direction
Mike Cahill

Consulting
Josh Anderson

Live Announcing
Enrique Gutierrez of KMEX/Univision 34

Performance
Josh Anderson
Scott Davis
Kenny Garay
Oscar Garay
Elmer Garcia
Brian Shim

Lighting Design
Jules Medina

Production Assistance
Bobby Campo
Meghan Grebling
Matt Miller
Alanna Yu

Video Documentation
Alex MacInnis

Photo Documentation
Patrick Miller

2009
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
RFID tags, computers, mobile phone and network, wood and AstroTurf ramps, donuts, metal putters, foam balls
Variable dimensions

Emptiness is Form (Golf and Donuts) was created as one of three commissioned works for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles as part of the museum's program Engagement Party. The work appropriates the museum’s architecture for a unique mini-golf course in which visitors show off their skills, are rewarded with phone calls, and are served fresh, vegan donuts.

Emptiness is Form (Golf and Donuts) attempts to merge two understood structures of social activity, miniature golf and museum-going. By playing the former in the space of the latter, participants détourne the museum itself into a site of physical competition, rowdy behavior, and cell phone use typically considered anathema to museum-going standards. Further, rather than exploring the exhibition galleries of the museum intended for public view, the work emphasizes the private, hidden spaces of the museum. Participants get an inverted view of Arata Isozaki's acclaimed building as they play through the boardroom, the rooftop overlooking the city, the office hallways of the Curatorial and Education departments, the mailroom, elevator and stairwell shafts, and down into the underground storage bays and loading docks, ignoring the formal exhibition spaces of art while exposing the inner workings of the museum and the people who run it.

The work has a secondary level of inquiry into the philosophical question of holes. Each of the golf balls used by a participant is embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag programmed with the participant's cell phone number. When a ball goes into a hole, a donut chef on site is alerted to make a donut (thus every time you make a hole, you make a hole – a donut hole). Additionally, the participant receives a phone call with a pre-recorded monologue on holes (a different one for each hole). The work engages participants with the dualities of interior vs. exterior, consumption vs. production, and positive vs. negative.

Supported by the James Irvine Foundation

Exhibition
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA

Catalog
Engagement Party Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012

Curator/Producer
Aandrea Stang
Think Tank

Voice Interventions
Nathan Philips

Production Assistance
Matt Miller
Ronald Vega

Video Documentation and Editing
Alex MacInnis

Photo Documentation
Patrick Miller

2009
Video, color, sound

Thick Thick Curtains is a music video made for the same-titled song by the Brooklyn-based band Multitudes.  The work layers two videos, one showing the flipping pages of text from a book and one showing the flipping pages from a thick stack of colored paper.  The work explores the repetitive and rhythmic qualities of the paper flipping and the fluctuations of the perceptual boundaries between abstract and representational video.

2007
Multi-channel video, color, sound, rear projection screens, projectors, computers
20 x 35 in. each

Wires – West LA #1-3 is a three-channel video projection installation showing looped recordings of electrical wire compositions from the neighborhood of West Los Angeles. The videos are rear projected onto rigid semi-transparent screens suspended in space by a tensioned hanging system. The projected images can be viewed from 360 degrees around the installation. The works explore the forms of these commonplace urban objects and the contrasting perception of geometric abstraction within a documentary video.  The video images are long static shots that concentrate on the stillness and minutiae of movement captured by the wires, birds, and clouds against a backdrop of flat blue sky.  The work also evokes the form of windows embedded into the interior space of the building architecture.  The screens slice through the air, acting as portals.

Exhibition
UCLA DMA MFA 2007 Exhibition, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA (catalog)
Greater LA MFA Exhibition (GLAMFA), California State University, Long Beach , Long Beach, CA (catalog)

Catalog
UCLA D|MA MFA 2007 Exhibition Poster
GLAMFA 2007 Exhibition Catalog

2007
C-print on paper
16 x 20 in. each

Domestic Spaces (Bath, Doorway) is a series of chromogenic prints on paper depicting images photographed in the domestic arena. The work explores topics of image recognition and the possibility for specific formal elements to invoke particular image types. The particular colors, gradients, and compositions of the images recall horizons and landscape images. Minute details, such as a bubble in the water and paint grain on the door, reveal the particulars of the picture's origins.

Exhibition
300m3 Art Space, Gothenburg, Sweden

Catalog
GLAMFA 2007 Exhibition Catalog

2007
C-print on paper
10 x 10 in. each

Yucca Valley Portraits is a triptych of chromogenic prints on paper depicting three portraits with faces obscured by a small boulder.  The images were taken in Yucca Valley, CA. The images capture a single action undertaken by each of the three subjects. Each of the subjects throws a large rock into the air and poses as the rock falls. The middle image #2 reveals the mechanics of how the picture is accomplished. The project explores the perceptual dilemma of an unlikely scene and the possibility for collage via action and performance rather than post-production compositing.  The hands raised in the air in image #2 evoke the magician’s touch or, metaphorically speaking, the optical illusion.

Exhibition
300m3 Art Space, Gothenburg, Sweden
Ut Med Konsten! (Out With the Art!), Göteborg Konst, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) Extended, Stadsbibliotecket Göteborg, Gothenburg, Sweden (catalog)

Catalog
Ut Med Konsten! (Out With the Art!) Exhibition Catalog, Gothenburg, Sweden

Collection
Swedish Council for Cultural Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden

2007
Mobile phones and networks
Variable dimensions

Knifeandfork (Sue Huang and Brian House) created The Wrench as a commissioned work for Rhizome in 2007.  The title of the work refers to the 1978 book by Primo Levi, also called The Wrench, which recounts tales told to a narrator by an itinerant steelworker named Tino Faussone. Faussone's sharply observed accounts of life on the job outline an idiosyncratic philosophy organized by profound individuality and a deeply contingent and physical relationship to the world. The stories reflect on both the meaning of work and the work of narrative.  In Knifeandfork’s The Wrench, Levi’s story is deconstructed and recast as a mobile phone text-message exchange between participants and a contemporary Tino played by an artificially intelligent agent (i.e. a chatbot).

Knifeandfork’s The Wrench takes place over the course of a week. The dialogue, though reminiscent of an SMS-novel, is not entirely predetermined. Rather, Tino attempts to be convincingly human, and the real-time narrative intertwines the lives of the character and the participant through the ubiquitous yet restrictive communication channel of text-messaging. Further, certain interests and events of the character's life are dynamically generated from real-world material via RSS/Atom content feeds. By animating Levi's original text, The Wrench challenges the division between the experience of a fiction and our performance of everyday life.

Over the course of the work, Tino was adjusted to respond to natural conversation. Like any endeavor exploring dialogue between a human and a computer, The Wrench invokes the Turing Test. Though often failing to respond appropriately to a participant's expressions, there is enough serendipity in the exchange for Tino's persona to hover in the uncanny valley between obvious artificial construction and an aware partner. In this he demonstrates ideas about virtual character development outlined by Janet Murray, including the 'ELIZA-effect': humans often find themselves willingly "attributing greater intelligence or intentionality to a machine than it possesses." Part of the appeal of Tino's persona is his intentional and unintentional quirks.

Additionally, Knifeandfork is concerned with how SMS can serve as a 'literary machine' capable of the same kind of combinatoric language experiments conducted by the French experimental literary group Oulipo or as a mechanism for interactive fiction inspired by games such as Zork. Espen Aarseth groups such works under the term 'cybertext', indicating that the process of feedback is essential to the production of text. The first-person perspective and verbal nature intrinsic to SMS make it an intriguing medium for cybertext. However, the spatial nature of the mobile phone and the imperative poetics of text-messaging also suggest its use as a contemporary tool in the kind of nontheatrical performance prefigured by Fluxus and demonstrated by Tim Etchell's Surrender Control. Uniquely positioned to combine these methodologies, SMS allows the transposition of literature into the experiential domain, animating fictional text with everyday life in a way that is elusive to other new media, such as virtual reality.

The Wrench is technically realized with TXTML, software Knifeandfork developed for creating interactive SMS applications. TXTML was specifically designed for narrative and natural-language uses of SMS (as opposed to more traditional, stateless, and syntax-based services), and it abstracts away the technical layers of message delivery and state management. The script itself is open-source: participants, should they be so inclined, are able to view, modify, and expand the structure of the narrative.

Commission
Rhizome, New Museum, New York, NY

Additional Concept/Writing
Johanna Linsley
Nathan Phillips

2007
C-print on paper
8 x 10 in. each

Spinach Series #1-6 is a series of chromogenic prints on paper depicting Chinese spinach suspended from chopsticks. The images were selected based on the strength of the figures that emerge from the spinach mass. The work explores the pattern recognition capabilities of the visual system and the environmental influences that cause humans to see representational objects in random visual stimuli. The wood panel background exerts a secondary visual stimulus for pattern recognition.

Exhibition
New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Greater LA MFA Exhibition (GLAMFA), California State University, Long Beach , Long Beach, CA (catalog)

Catalog
GLAMFA 2007 Exhibition Catalog

2005
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Multi-channel video, color, sound, RFID tags, computers
Variable dimensions

5 ‘til 12 was created for an exhibition at the Beall Center for Art + Technology in Irvine, CA. The immersive installation transforms the Beall Center into the site of a nonlinear interactive narrative. The visitor is invited to watch four characters, on four monitors, as they recount the tragic circumstances of the exhibition's opening night. The experience is unique for each visitor, as each story is individualized using dynamic video editing to reassemble dialogue according to the choices that a visitor makes in moving through the space.

The premise of the narrative is derived from Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, in which four eyewitness accounts of a murder are presented to the viewer, who serves in the role of a magistrate. The contradicting stories reveal that objectivity is elusive, as each individual cannot help but infuse his story, consciously or not, with personal shame and ambition. Each story holds a valid reality of its own, a subjective truth that reinforces a desired identity. It is unclear who is lying, or if it matters. However, perhaps there could be another layer: in addition to stories that differ between tellers, might an individual's story change with each new telling? 5 'til 12 proposes that we evolve multiple narratives as we explore multiple identities.

The process is inspired by the Oulipo literary movement, in particular the canonical piece by Raymond Queneau, One Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, in which 'potential' literature emerges when lines of words are spliced and recombined. 5 'til 12 draws from the artists' own journals, fantasies, and parodies, spoken aloud by the characters and filmed to create a database of cinematic possibilities. The clips are then algorithmically assembled during the exhibition, drawing from the enormous number of potential personas for each character. In total, the material in 5 'til 12 can be combined to form on the order of a googol squared possible variations on the narrative.

The characters themselves (represented by routines in the software) select from the possibilities in rounds, using a programmatic variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma, a model from game theory where individuals choose to cooperate or not in order to maximize their own personal advantage. Seeking to portray themselves in the best possible light, the characters must choose to be complimentary, neutral, or vindictive toward each other. One who appears confident and blameless while illustrating everyone else's faults will 'score' the highest. However, in the following round, he or she can expect revenge and must eventually make amends. The strategy of each character is adapted using an evolutionary algorithm according to its effectiveness in each round.

The installation uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) cards to identify individual visitors. When each new visitor swipes a card, a new story is selected, and the visitor is recognized as he or she explores the narrative space.

Exhibition/Commission
Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA

Audio-Visual Content/Editing
David Feinberg

Performances
Amy Finkel
Brian House
Sue Huang
Nathan Phillips

Additional Writing
Amy Finkel
Nathan Phillips
Joe Schiappa

Video Documentation
David Feinberg

2005
In collaboration with Brian House (Knifeandfork)
Mobile phones and network, public WiFi networks

Hunkdekopf was created for the Loving Berlin festival held in Berlin, Germany in 2005. The work invites participants to experience the the Ringbahn, Berlin’s S-Bahn train route for the S41 and S42 trains, as a literal vehicle for moving through a text-message based restructured narrative that investigates the nature of private experience in public space.

The Ringbahn encircles the central city. From an aerial view the Ringbahn has the shape of a dog's head, and so it is colloquially known as "Hundekopf", German for “dog's head.” The Ringbahn is an integral component of the city's transportation network, and its restoration into a complete circle after the fall of the Berlin Wall has given it symbolic significance among Berliners. From the Ringbahn windows riders can gain an incomplete perspective of the city as a whole, and Berlin's TV tower (the city's most iconic landmark) is always within sight.

A distribution of flyers throughout the Ringbahn’s stations give instructions about how to participate in the project.  After text-messaging the name of a Ringbahn station to the phone number printed on the flyer, the participant receives a message with instructions to board a specific train arriving in the next few minutes.

Hundekopf has a unique approach to location awareness. Individual trains are tracked via the station arrival times published in real-time on the BVG (Berlin's transit authority) website. Once the participant is on a train, his or her location can therefore be determined without the use of advanced locative technology. Using a GSM modem, the Hundekopf system delivers a message to participants after each station they pass on their way around the Ringbahn. This message is place-specific and offers a cinematic experience to the participant as the ordinarily passive features of the landscape are re-contextualized.

The work builds a narrative structure derived from the specific physical structure of the environment. What emerged was dubbed a 'hub narrative' because it is not tied together by a series of events; instead it is anchored by the central axis of the TV tower. There is no beginning and no end, so the messages remain coherent regardless of where the participant enters the narrative. The narrative text messages invoke the theme of resistance, which was central to the piece - a resistance against de facto modes of inhabiting public space. The messages sent to the participants outlined a Situationist-inspired manifesto, tactics for experiencing the environment within and without the train in a novel and provocative light.

Exhibition
Loving Berlin, Berlin, Germany